Obamacraze, Clinton, & The Sixth Sense

OBAMACRAZE Or Obamacare? Clinton, Bill, says the former:

The last eight years have been hard for real progressives. After some racist taunts, by a few, Obama became wildly popular (according to the polls). Yet, in some ways, he was the most right-wing president, EVER. The plutocrats’ extrication from the 2008 crisis was concocted by G.W. Bush, and mostly executed by Obama. The mercantilist and fascist rule of carefully nurtured monopolies was straight out of corporate fascism, as technically explained by professor Gentile and implemented by Mussolini, then Chancellor-President Hitler: see the blatant example of Apple Inc. paying 1% taxes, with the full backing of Obama!

And the symbol of all this fascist, oligarchic drive, has been the so-called Obamacare. I criticized it thoroughly when it was first proposed, in countless, unambiguous essays. However, criticizing idiots for idiocy, or the corrupt for corruption, is as clever as bashing one’s head on a brick wall, in the hope of curing a headache. Criticizing Obamacare was suicidal, for one’s reputation as a progressive. All it did was burnish my reputation as a “racist”(never mind that I am zero racist, with family originating from two continents and Pacific Islands).

Not Just A Sixth Sense, But Also A Sensory Organ

Many who are for Clinton are rabidly so, seemingly more interested with insulting Donald Trump than by the (extremely important) issues themselves. Thus I got really surprised yesterday. Yesterday happened the event of the little boy who said the emperor had no clothes. Except that it was a rather big boy, named Bill, and the emperor was Satan himself, fully under the covers of a caring attitude.

Speaking at a Democratic rally in Flint, Michigan, the former president ripped into Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) for flooding the health care insurance market by private companies vying for market share, and causing premiums to rise for middle-class Americans who do not qualify for subsidies.“So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world,” Clinton said. In further depiction, Bill Clinton said average Americans were “getting killed” by Obamacare. (Schools are actually pretty much dying from it, especially private schools, or even giant public university systems, such as the University of California.)

Wow. Those Clintons are really determined to get back to the White House. They are even ready to tell it as it is.

***

Often the obvious is the hardest to enunciate, if it wallops Conventional Wisdom. Yes, under Obamacare, Premiums have exploded, so did “Co-pays” and access to doctors has shrunk. When one divides the public in ten slices, according to income, only the lowest one had profited from Obamacare. In other words, healthcare has been made worse for most, so that Obama and his wealthy supporters can claim to be progressives. Actually, Obamacare is the last, and most spectacular victory of the spirit of greed. It is “Obamagreed” or “healthgreed”, rather than Obamacare, or healthcare. Running care for profit has never worked, and cannot ever work: care and greed appeal to different hormones.

***

One generally considers that there are five senses: hearing, touch, sight (ophthalmoception), taste (gustaoception), smell (olfacoception). However, the ability to detect other stimuli beyond those also exists, for example temperature (thermoception), and kinesthetic sense (proprioception, because muscles have stretch receptors), and also pain (nociception).

Finally balance (equilibrioception) is not just a sense, but it has its own organ, located in the inner ear. When people are in space, experiencing no gravity, the sixth sense coming from the semi-circular canals comes into conflict with the sense coming from the eyes.

And now even Bill Clinton is showing Common Sense about that emperor with clothes of greed, Obamacare. Lack of Common Sense is not the ultimate corruption, but it is close (only the grossest violations of love and care are greater) . Yes, it should be known as “Obamacraze”. Thank you.

Indeed, but greed is a pervasive hormone and finds in healthcare a bountiful hunting territory, as – basically – people will pay anything to be in good health, and “pay anything” is a powerful signal for the greedy.

Healthcare systems may be designed for optimum efficiency and equity, but they just are too juicy to ignore, and feeding off their trough is universal, but diverse.

A most refined variation is to be found in the UK.

The UK, where even the poorest vote for neoliberals in religious fervor, nevertheless is unique in the EU for funding its NHS from the taxpayer’s pocket – making it, in that respect, a quasi-Communist country.

I’ve long wondered about that paradox, but the explanation is simple.

Funding from the State’s coffers removes the need for (even approximately) balancing the budget between premiums and benefits.

This allows long-term unemployed to be turned over to the NHS for long-term disability benefits, taking them off unemployment statistics.

The UK is thus able to claim an extremely low (4.9%) unemployment rate, and therefore to claim that neoliberal policies, harsh as they sound, deliver full employment, as opposed to the befuddled socio-democracies across the Channel.

An extremely powerful propaganda point.

It carefully never mentions that the proportion of working age sickness in the UK is absolutely humongous next to that of other EU countries – with no obvious genuine health issues to explain such a discrepancy. Yet that discrepancy is the visible part of that massive fraud, which aims at validating Tory and New-Labour “policies” of subservience to Pluto.

Thus, ostentatious generosity towards the weak and the sick is actually a ploy to reinforce the stranglehold of Britain’s plutocrats over their bleating flock.

“The UK has the highest rate of working age sickness of all 15 European Union (EU) countries. The UK rate of 7.0% compares with only 2.1% in Germany and 0.3% in France. FIGURE 3 shows that, as commentators frequently point out, Britain compares favourably with the rest of the EU in terms of ILO unemployment, with 8 countries having a higher rate. But if the working age sick were to be added to the unemployed, Britain would become the third worst, after Finland and Spain.”

“In 1999, France had almost exactly the same WWR as the UK (13.0% compared to 12.9%). But France counts 91% of people not in work but wanting work as ILO unemployed, compared to the UK’s 44%. This, together with the evidence cited earlier, strongly suggests that France is much better off in labour market terms than the UK.”

“By declining to look at overall worklessness rather than at the ILO unemployment rate, British official and academic commentators currently give a self-deceiving picture in which the UK is presented as having a particularly successful labour market record compared to other countries. The high levels of male inactivity due to sickness are presented as an incidental anomaly or “imbalance” which is not directly related to economic performance. The key text here is Nickell & Quintini (2001); the weaknesses in their argument are discussed in Webster (2001c). The same line of argument is used by the Treasury and DWP in HM Treasury (2001).”

This massive fraud obviously is useful also to neoliberal propagandists across the Channel, so the lie is everywhere, and exposing it is not easy.

Very interesting observation, Dominique. I was totally unaware of it. I think your link pretty much proves it.

Another angle: A friend of mine went to Normale Sup (Math, rue d’Ulm). Logically enough, he is a (bond) hedge fund manager in London now, when he is not in Singapore. He has been based in London for quite a few year. He told me over the summer: “en Angleterre, ils cultivent les pauvres.” (in England they cultivate the poor). It is this careful nurturing, spiritual and physical, of the poor by the extreme right which greatly explains Brexit: the poorest and dumbest, the more Brexity (notice the disappearance of Chris Snuggs from the comments here, BTW… Something about disappointment?)

The only thing that matters is the EMPLOYMENT rate, not the U2, or whatever… In employment, the same dismal picture is to be had across the UK, US, France, etc.

The Netherlands has never seen a dirty trick it did not love to use. Netherlands participated in WWI, extending the war 3 years (by breaking Franco-British blockade, thanks to USA). In WWII, the French army lost its mobile reserve of seven (7) Panzer Divisionen (Entschuldigung mein Deutsch!), thanks to the Netherlands (or more exactly the dirty trap Hitler had set that way, pulling on French’s heart strings).
Present Netherlands is a tax heaven. Frankreich und Deutschland should go blitzkrieg it…

Ouch! Banging one’s head against a wall, indeed. “Criticizing Obamacare was suicidal, for one’s reputation as a progressive.” Well said, I still wish Bernie would have run as a third party, to end the Clintons’ reign, or rain, of greed upon the people. But I’m afraid the true lessons would have been misinterpreted, and Bernie would get no credit due, other than to take the blame for enabling Trump, and become another red herring of (NY Times version) of history. But thanks for a brilliant summary today, thanks PA!

Thank you for thanking me, Kevishaw! I was 100% for Bernie (although I historically did dislike some of his right wing positions, like on guns or the F35! But I could understand why he embraced them…) Bernie could have beaten Trump. Hillary will not…

spite of the giant propaganda of insults, some of them grotesque, directed against Trump (they are trying to hit the soft spot in time, where insults are not revealed to be unwarranted, from lack of time to rebuff them, although Pence did a pretty good job doing just that). Hillary is espousing anti-Clinton (!) positions, like on prison. Under her Bill, more than one million new prisoners were put in jail (I know I am involved in the “Clemency Project” to shame Obama in releasing some of his “black” “brothers”, jailed FOR LIFE from Clinton epoch laws, for doing basically nothing). She had the gull in the “debate” to present herself as against what her husband organized and condoned…
There are no limits to insolence and impudence…

Obamacare is a convoluted mess-and likely doomed to fail unless it gets a major overhaul. When insurers pull out of exchanges because the profits are not there, that tells it all. Profit should not be the goal. The public option or medicare for all is what it should become. The medicare system gets the profit out (mostly- the are the supplemental plans to cover the 20% issue, the advantage plans) and until it becomes available to all, US will have greed ruling health care costs.
If WJC is talking about it maybe it is not too late. Sanders and Warren need to keep the heat on HRC. Question is will she accept that she must follow their lead or stubbornly sink.

Unbelievable that despite all the evidence made public, all the atrocities committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya… in the name of “freedom”, all the horrors of war imposed by US foreign policy since the Hiroshima bombing and Kissinger (too many to list, with the occasional Nobel Peace Prize on top), you still advocate a US (or European, same thing unfortunately) military intervention to take down the “Assad regime”. What a sad, sad world we live in, when one has to support Putin as the only alternative to preserve what can still be, an alterity, the necessary illusion that a choice is still possible, maybe even a transcendence.

And still, you gloat of moral and cultural superiority… Moral does not come from strength, moral only justifies an action after all sense of Good and Evil is lost (and no, Good and Evil are not moral concepts). And it has been lost for good while…

Where do you want me to put it?
“Moral does not come from strength, moral only justifies an action after all sense of Good and Evil is lost (and no, Good and Evil are not moral concepts).”
Question: what are good and evil then, if not moral concepts?
My answer; they are ethological concepts… whereas morality is what works in a given historical socio-economy. Tech in the last 100,000 years, has made both concepts distinct.

Well, Assad is a total criminal, like Milosevic in Serbia, or Karadzic, Mladic, etc… I was NOT for attacking Serbia anymore than I am for attacking Syria. After the three preceding were (finally) arrested, Serbia became pacific and civilized.
Putin is also a criminal. Not just because of what he did in Chechnya. But he has clearly confiscated democracy in Russia. That does not mean that I do not disagree with all he says, or even does.

I have written about Hiroshima, too, in excruciating detail. It was a terrible, and terribly appropriate decision, it saved millions of lives (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Yes, millions, think about it. The Japs had started the war, killed more than 30 millions, suffering themselves less than one million dead in direct fighting (they had more death from starving their own troops). The war was killing 10,000 people a day at the time. One can pose all one what wants. Reality is strikingly different. I have had so many people in my family killed by fascists, that it is a very small family. I was myself deliberately bombed by right wing extremists. So your misunderstandings of my position and your Chomsky the Chimp sort of positioning makes me shrug. I nearly feel like voting for Clinton, after reading you, it is that bad of a shrug… 😉

This is the whole problem with the Dylan style thinking: beautifully irrelevant to reality, when one comes down really to it.

Another thing: you really make fun of concepts by putting things which are exactly opposite like the abominable war crime assault of that little punk Jimmy Carter on Afghanistan, July 3, 1979 in the same bag as getting rid of bloody demented Qaddafi. What’s unbelievable is how much so many know so little. But then, of course my father and my mother went to all these countries, and met some of the worthies there.

Thank you for your reply. As for where to put my comments, I was replying to your post on Syria, maybe it would be more appropriate to put it there.

Regarding Syria, I do not think anything I can say will make you change your mind. You seem to take for granted or even encourage foreign military interventions in the name of “human rights” or other, I do not. Modern geopolitics had a twist in its narrative, and now represents itself when times are right as “civilization”, “democracy”, “human rights” against “dictatorship”, “civil unrest” and “chaos”. But it has only always been about a single, simple thing: national interest. As you seem to like FD Roosevelt, he coined the famous “he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch” about Somoza in Honduras. That sums it up really well: after all, Western powers (and the US in particular), were happy setting up coup d’état and promoting dictatorship all over the world for decades (the Pinochets, Suhartos, Iran Shahs…). That is Assad’s main problem : he is not OUR son of a bitch, worse, he is THEIR (Iran, Russia) son of bitch. Just like Gadaffi was.

Assad, Gadaffi, Castro and others, while true dictator repressing opposition and democratic progress (add to the list any of the CNN-BBC “dictator package” tropes), also enabled their countries to reach a certain level of prosperity: Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy of Africa, these countries were mostly secular, with free education for both sexes. Of course of course, as all predatory dictatorships, they favor an ethnic or religious groups and repress opponents violently but I think it would be fair to consider the average Libyan lived a better life under Gadaffi than now.

It is highly relevant to consider the parallel rise of radical Islam and American foreign policy in the Middle East. With the unholy alliance with Gulf States, the US has de facto enabled them to export their nefarious Wahhabi Islam in the Sunni (80% or so) Muslim world. In the form of aid, mosque construction, Koranic schools…, this abomination of a religion has spread incredibly quickly, including in European Muslim communities, filling the void left by failing education and integration systems. And we now have to deal with this new form of terrorism (not only bombs, but burqas, Shariah laws et all), whereas only 30 years ago, sighting a burqa in Egypt. Algeria or Tunisia was a very rare occurrence that left locals talking as if a bikini clad woman had walked up the street. This has contributed in making a smaller, more dangerous, stupider World for anyone.
Where does Syria fit in all this? Syria is the only country with a sizeable Shiah population in the region, together with Iraq. A secular state, but with strong historical ties with Iran and a long history of opposing Israel (Hezbollah support…). This makes it stand out against the “Allies” in the Middle East, and put it on everyone’s crosshairs: Saudi and their vassals (Iran is the archenemy) , Israel (Hezzbollah and Iran are the only opposition they have to go to war with regularly) and the US (Iran will always be part of the “axis of evil”). With the Arab Spring popping out here and there (spontaneously of course, thanks to Twitter (TM) and a democratic wind), the Syrian fruit was ripe after Libya and the attempt on Egypt.

But let’s blame Assad, just like we blamed Saddam and Fidel before (notice how diminishing and despising it is not to call people by their full name?). Let’s justify a bloodshed that could only happen because foreign fighters were called in, arms and training provided by us, with the bloodthirsty actions of a dictator, let lies spread over chemical weapons, barrel bombs on one side but not the other (gas canister rockets and suicide trucks are precision weapons, no collateral damage) and Allepo hospitals being destroyed. Let’s utterly destroy and stomp on another beautiful place with a history so rich and so old that it becomes an eyesore for modernists (or Wahabbists).

To address your other points (but my reply is getting a bit long and a tedious read I am afraid), I don’t really get your point on Hiroshima. No one is posing here, it is a well known fact that the Japanese were looking to make peace by (among other signals) sending their foreign minister to Stalin (poor decision but still…) in the summer of 1945, and that dropping the bomb could have been avoided if not for preventing Soviet advances in the North. And on the origins of the War, falling to the traditional explanation of the treacherous, out of the blue attack on Pearl Harbor is a bit easy, especially when one chooses to ignore the context that led to the attack. Let’s just say the Japanese were cornered, and they acted stupidly (it was a bit of a specialty for them at the time it seems…). Now I wish I had your clear cut vision of history and morals, but you ought to read about Operation Paperclip, the pardons given to war criminals in Germany or Japan to add a bit of grey to your nterpretation.

I find it strange you keep mentioning how your family’s experience in the countries we mention in these discussions can serve as an objective take on reality there. I myself have extended roots with Muslim countries, have family there, and have been visiting them before I can even remember it. Does this anecdotal experience makes my point of view more relevant? I do not think so, on the contrary it is important to keep a distance between oneself and a subject/ matter/ object/ concept to stay free.

Now on morals. I do not believe concepts of utility or usefulness (everything has to be useful, otherwise let’s throw it away – that’s how monotheism works) are relevant for ontological explanations. When you say morality is what works in a given society, I fully agree with you, nothing new since Schopenhauer, Nietzsche or Levi-Strauss here. Good and Evil are both wide and tainted concepts, let’s say I see Evil as potential negativity, a counter force in the hidden, an unintended consequence, as the urging and uncontrollable necessity to take a dump in the middle of a philosophical conversation. In other words, Evil (for lack of a better word maybe?) as the tiny yet most important part mankind will never fully get a grip on. Some may call it Part Maudite (the Accursed Share of Bataille), chaos, Death, destiny or transcendence. By acknowledging its persistence, by conjuring its presence, human beings have become Human.
Now when something grotesquely bad happens (child beheading, rape, mass murderers and torture, or the flogging of an old horse that drove Nietzsche insane in Torino), Evil takes the face we have grown accustomed to. But it does not end there.

Thank you for the discussion and creating a place that permit them, I look forward to your comments.

I was not advocating an attack in Syria as in Libya. Not at all. The Assad family has to be removed from power. Libya was different, because Qaddafi’s army was too tied to Qaddafi’s family, and Qaddafi’s state was too tied to him, and Libya not just tribal, but multi-civilizational. Libya can only become an extremely loose confederation, and I am for re-introducing the 3,000 year old Libyan civilization, let alone the Punic element which succeeded it. Back by popular demand.

There has already been foreign intervention in Syria. For decades. First from Egypt, Iraq, then from Iran. Syria itself messed with Lebanon forever (and calmed a bit only after being hit by a French bombing).

Syria was at peace only when it was… occupied by the French army.

I am going to displace all this where it belongs, to the Syrian essay.

Here is the start:
HUMANISM IS FORCE. No-Fly Over Libya.
THE LYING GATES OF HELL: WORLD WAR TWO, AND NOW.

Democracy Has To Use Force Against That Major Plutocrat, Gaddafi.

***

Abstract: Qaddafi’s aviation just bombed the main water tank of the major city and oil terminal of Ras Lanouf, depriving the city of water. Ras Lanouf is held by the freedom fighters. French TV crews on the ground have witnessed, and filmed massive bombing raids by the planes of the tyrant. The freedom fighters find very difficult to hold the front, because of those aerial assaults (they have no defensive anti-aircraft missiles).

Khadafy is one of the world’s top plutocrats. Thus his friends are many, mighty, and they know how to hide their wealth and power.

Qaddafi controls directly 140 billion dollars, mostly in the West (that corresponds to such a hole in official Libyan finances). Just as one does not know how to spell Gaddafi’s name, nor how many people he tortures everyday, one does not know where his financial web is (part of it could be in a TV station next to you, and certainly all over Hollywood). 140 billion dollars make Qaddafi one of the West’s most important masters. Kadafi does not just own Libya, he owns you.

Gaddafi became great friend of the Western leadership under George W. Bush, because plutocrats love each other. Takes one to love one. Especially in these days, when plutocrats lose so many friends among the many, the small, credulous and naive.

Moreover, the USA knew nothing much about the Arab-Muslim world (and still does not, hence the obsession with syrupy celebration of Islam). After 9/11, the government of the USA purchased the Libyan Gestapo to help in these matters, in the best tradition of fascists lending a helping hand to fascists, wherever they are, whatever they are doing.

So it should come as no surprise that the US Secretary of “Defense” Robert Gates, an old hand of the imperial fascist rule, has been lying about the difficulty of establishing “No Fly” zones over Libya.

According to the trembling Gates, “No Fly” over Libya is too shocking to consider. Why? What happened to your stealthy, supersonic F22s?

Or is it because Khaddafy is the devil Gates knows, and appreciates, part of the worldwide plutocratic conspiracy he serves, and has always served? Or because Gates aspires to cash in with said worldwide plutocracy, within a few months, as many of his predecessors in the Bush and Obama administrations have done?